The International Astronautical Prize is awarded in recognition of an important work which can advance one of the questions on which the realization of interstellar navigation depends, or which can increase human knowledge in one of the branches touching the astronautical science". Such is the motto carried by the Astronomical Society of France for the attribution of this prestigious prize.
This year, this prize is awarded to Pernelle Bernardi, CNRS engineer at the Observatoire de Paris - PSL, jointly with Sylvestre Maurice from the Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie, for their major contributions to the SuperCam instrument of the NASA Mars 2020 mission. Pernelle Bernardi is a system engineer at the Laboratory for Space Studies and Instrumentation in Astrophysics (LESIA) and is responsible for the specifications and performance of SuperCam, while Sylvestre Maurice is the chief scientist and principal investigator of this instrument equipping the masthead of the Perseverance rover, currently deployed on the surface of the planet Mars.
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